[R-G] Make No Mistake: McCain's a Neocon

[Anthony Fenton]

  Make No Mistake: McCain's a Neocon
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2008/060808.html

By Robert Parry
June 8, 2008

Since clinching the Republican presidential nomination, John McCain  
has sought to hide the forest of his neoconservative alignment with  
George W. Bush amid the trees of details, such as stressing  
differences over military tactics used in Iraq.
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But the larger reality should be clear: McCain is a hard-line  
neoconservative who buys into Bush’s “preemptive war” theories abroad  
and his concept of an all-powerful “unitary executive” at home.

 From McCain’s pre-Iraq invasion speeches to his campaign’s recent  
embrace of Bush’s imperial presidency, American voters should realize  
that if they choose John McCain, they will be locking in at least four  
more years of war with much of the Islamic world while selling out the  
Founders’ vision of a democratic Republic where no one is above the law.

Take, for instance, an address that McCain gave to the Munich  
Conference on Security Policy on Feb. 2, 2002. In the speech – with  
the ambitious title, “From Crisis to Opportunity: American  
Internationalism and the New Atlantic Order” – the Arizona senator  
laid out the “full monte” of a neocon agenda.

In those heady days after the U.S. ouster of Afghanistan’s Taliban  
regime, McCain hailed “a new American internationalism” designed “to  
end safe harbor for terrorists anywhere, to aggressively target rogue  
regimes that threaten us with weapons of mass destruction, and to  
consolidate freedom’s gains through institutions that reflect our  
values.”

To McCain, this meant that the United States had a fundamental right  
to invade any country on earth that was viewed as an actual or  
potential threat, a theory of American exceptionalism to international  
law that was at the heart of Bush’s strategy of “preemptive war.”

“Americans believe we have a mandate to defeat and dismantle the  
global terrorist network that threatens both Europe and America,”  
McCain said. “As our President has said, this network includes not  
just the terrorists but the states that make possible their continued  
operation.

“Many of these are rogue regimes that possess or are developing  
weapons of mass destruction which threaten Europeans and Americans  
alike. We in America learned the hard way that we can never again wait  
for our enemies to choose their moment. The initiative is now ours,  
and we are seizing it.”

Neocon Forerunner

McCain even presented himself as a forerunner to Bush’s  
neoconservative policies.

“Several years ago, I and many others argued that the United States,  
in concert with willing allies, should work to undermine from within  
and without outlaw regimes that disdain the rules of international  
conduct and whose internal dysfunction threatened other nations,”  
McCain said.

“Just this week, the American people heard our President articulate a  
policy to defeat the ‘axis of evil’ that threatens us with its support  
for terror and development of weapons of mass destruction,” McCain  
said in reference to Bush’s warning to Iraq, Iran and North Korea.

“Dictators that harbor terrorists and build these weapons are now on  
notice that such behavior is, in itself, a casus belli. Nowhere is  
such an ultimatum more applicable than in Saddam Hussein's Iraq.”

McCain then reprised what turned out to be the bogus case for invading  
Iraq.

”Almost everyone familiar with Saddam's record of biological weapons  
development over the past two decades agrees that he surely possesses  
such weapons. He also possesses vast stocks of chemical weapons and is  
known to have aggressively pursued, with some success, the development  
of nuclear weapons,” McCain said.

“Terrorist training camps exist on Iraqi soil, and Iraqi officials are  
known to have had a number of contacts with al-Qaeda. These were  
probably not courtesy calls,” McCain added in the smug, sarcastic tone  
common to that period.

As it turned out, the “vast stocks” of chemical weapons and the  
prospect of nuclear weapons were non-existent. The “terrorist training  
camps” on Iraqi soil were hostile to Hussein’s secular regime and were  
located outside Baghdad’s control in areas protected by the U.S.- 
British-enforced “no-fly zone.”

Evidence collected after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003  
revealed that Saddam Hussein rebuffed overtures from al-Qaeda, which  
he regarded as an enemy in the Arab world. Those contacts were not  
even “courtesy calls.” [For details, see Neck Deep: The Disastrous  
Presidency of George W. Bush.]

Rush to War

However, in February 2002, McCain was a leading voice in the neocon  
rush for war in Iraq, as an extension of Bush’s “war on terror.”

“The next front is apparent, and we should not shirk from  
acknowledging it,” McCain said. “A terrorist resides in Baghdad, with  
the resources of an entire state at his disposal, flush with cash from  
illicit oil revenues and proud of a decade-long record of defying the  
international community's demands that he come clean on his programs  
to develop weapons of mass destruction.

”A day of reckoning is approaching. Not simply for Saddam Hussein, but  
for all members of the Atlantic community, whose governments face the  
choice of ending the threat we face every day from this rogue regime  
or carrying on as if such behavior, in the wake of September 11th,  
were somehow still tolerable.

“The Afghan campaign set a precedent, and provided a model: the  
success of air power, combined with Special Operations forces working  
together with indigenous opposition forces, in waging modern war.

”The next phase of the war on terror can build on this model, but we  
also must learn from its limitations. More American boots on the  
ground may be required to prevent the escape of terrorists we target  
in the future, and we should all be mindful that such a commitment  
might entail higher casualties than we have suffered in Afghanistan,”  
McCain continued.

”The most compelling defense of war is the moral claim that it allows  
the victors to define a stronger and more enduring basis for peace.  
Just as September 11th revolutionized our resolve to defeat our  
enemies, so has it brought into focus the opportunities we now have to  
secure and expand freedom.”

McCain’s full embrace of this neocon global theory – both in its  
grandiose substance and its grandiloquent rhetoric – marked the over- 
the-top hubris that contributed to the suppression of any serious pre- 
Iraq War debate in the United States and then to the ill-considered  
rush to invade Iraq.

As the war in Iraq turned sour and anti-Americanism swept the Middle  
East, McCain began criticizing the Bush administration not for its  
imperial overreach but for not reaching even farther. McCain began  
advocating a larger U.S. expeditionary force to pacify Iraq, a policy  
that gave rise to the “surge.”

‘League of Democracies’

Despite these tactical differences, McCain has shown no sign of  
rethinking his vision of an alliance of “willing” nations going around  
the world challenging and replacing disfavored governments. Indeed, he  
has made this neocon concept a centerpiece of his presidential campaign.

The presumptive Republican presidential nominee has proposed a “League  
of Democracies,” which would apply economic and military pressure on  
“rogue states” when the United Nations Security Council refuses to do  
so.

Though McCain has dressed up his League of Democracies in pretty  
language about respecting international law and spreading freedom, its  
essence is to make permanent Bush’s “coalition of the willing” concept  
used in Iraq.

McCain insists his League won’t supplant the Security Council, but it  
would do just that, fulfilling a long-held neocon dream of voiding the  
international system that U.S. leaders fashioned after World War II to  
enforce the Nuremberg principle that aggressive war was the “supreme”  
international crime.

McCain’s League would create for the U.S. President a standing  
organization for engaging in aggressive war against “rogue regimes”  
whether they are an immediate, potential -- or imaginary -- threat.

The irony is that when McCain and Bush talk about the danger of “rogue  
regimes” operating outside international law and threatening other  
nations, that is exactly what their neocon theories have made the  
United States: a country that – along with a few allies – becomes a  
law onto itself.

Similarly, McCain and Bush share the view that the President of the  
United States should embody and personify these new imperial powers.  
Just as the U.S. government can act in any way it sees fit under these  
neocon theories, its Commander in Chief also can do whatever he wants  
without legal constraints.

That was spelled out by a top McCain adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin,  
declaring in a letter to the right-wing National Review that McCain  
agreed with Bush’s assertion that the President may override laws that  
he deems an impediment to fighting the “war on terror.”

Holtz-Eakin said McCain supports Bush’s program of warrantless  
wiretaps despite the Fourth Amendment’s protections against  
unreasonable searches and a 1978 law requiring the Executive to gain  
approval from a special court for intelligence-related wiretaps inside  
the United States.

“Neither the administration nor the telecoms need apologize for  
actions that most people, except for the ACLU and trial lawyers,  
understand were constitutional and appropriate in the wake of the  
attacks on Sept. 11, 2001,” Holtz-Eakin wrote in describing McCain’s  
position.

Article II Powers

Holtz-Eakin further cited Article II powers of the Constitution in  
explaining how McCain would act as President, suggesting that McCain –  
like Bush – would exercise virtually unlimited executive powers for  
the duration of the indefinite “war on terror.”

McCain also has announced that he would appoint Supreme Court justices  
like Samuel Alito and John Roberts who – along with Antonin Scalia and  
Clarence Thomas – represent four votes in favor of reinterpreting the  
Constitution to grant the President the broad powers claimed by Bush  
and McCain.

If a President McCain gets to replace one of the five other justices  
with another Alito or Roberts, the new court majority could, in  
effect, rewrite the rules of the American Republic to declare the  
imperial presidency “constitutional.”

If that happens, the American people would no longer possess  
“unalienable rights,” as promised by the Founders and enshrined in the  
Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The President would possess what  
the neocons call “plenary” – or total – power.

That means the President would have the authority to arrest anyone as  
an “unlawful enemy combatant,” deny the person the right to a lawyer  
or a trial by jury, and subject the individual to any treatment that  
the President sees fit, from indefinite imprisonment up to torture and  
death.

This neocon vision also holds that the President – on his own  
authority – could take the nation to war anywhere in the world for  
whatever reason.

In essence, the United States would cease to be a democratic Republic  
with citizens guaranteed fundamental liberties and with an Executive  
possessing limited authority constrained by the Legislature. All  
meaningful power would be invested in the President as a modern-day  
monarch.

John McCain may criticize President Bush on the edges of  
neoconservative policies, such as failing to prosecute the Iraq War  
more aggressively, and he may differ with Bush on the efficacy of  
torture, given McCain’s own mistreatment as a Vietnam prisoner of war.

But there should be no doubt that a McCain victory would give the  
neocons another four-year lease on the White House. And, after those  
four years, there might be no feasible way back for the great American  
Republic.

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for  
the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Neck Deep: The  
Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, was written with two of his  
sons, Sam and Nat, and can be ordered at neckdeepbook.com. His two  
previous books, Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from  
Watergate to Iraq and Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press &  
'Project Truth' are also available there. Or go to Amazon.com.

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